


Have my heart, Take your time

by LostInAdmiration



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort, Established Relationship, Insomnia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostInAdmiration/pseuds/LostInAdmiration
Summary: They stayed quiet for a while, David moving his hand down and curling his fingers around the back of Matteo’s neck as Matteo reached out to rest his hand on David’s hip, smoothing his thumb across the exposed skin where his shirt had ridden up. Matteo just focused on David’s breathing, still slow and steady from the heaviness of sleep, and counted each breath as they lay together in the darkness. It quietened the static down in his head, made the crawling under his skin settle ever so slightly, and each exhale brought him back down to reality.





	Have my heart, Take your time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangetowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/gifts).



> Hi! It's been a while, hasn't it? (Over a year god damn)
> 
> I had absolutely no intentions of writing again but I ended up watching Druck and adored it, and then wanted to write a little something for my excellent friend Sarah's birthday, so here I am!
> 
> This has details to do with sensory overload, anxiety, and insomnia so if any of those make you feel uncomfortable, the this fic maybe isn't for you. 
> 
> Thank you so much to [Sarah](https://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/) for beta'ing this for me despite it being your own birthday gift, you're the best. Title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0NQhtf1JBs).
> 
>  
> 
> Hope you like it! <3

 

 

Tonight was not Matteo’s friend.

He was grateful that these sleepless nights were few and far between now. Lately there had been fewer and fewer miserable early mornings spent watching the sunrise, exhausted but still unable to sleep. The medication he’d been prescribed was definitely helping, and his therapist had given him some breathing exercises that worked surprisingly well. He’d been skeptical at first, sighing and crossing his arms tightly across his chest as she’d taught him how to ‘breathe in a square,’ whatever the hell that meant. But sure enough when the too long nights came and the dark made him feel claustrophobic, counting his way up as he inhaled and exhaled made the room feel like it was big enough to fit him inside it again. 

Sometimes that wasn’t enough, though, which is why Matteo found himself propped up against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. His skin was prickling painfully and his lungs were burning; he was sweating despite the room being cold, and it was making his hair stick to his forehead and his eyes sting. It hurt in ways that Matteo couldn’t understand, like how his breath seemed to get stuck in his throat, or how his eyes felt hollowed out, or how his head throbbed dully in time with his racing heart.

Everything felt far too constricting. The darkness was wrapping itself around his chest and his neck, getting tighter by the second. Matteo kicked away the bedsheets that somehow felt too hot and too cold at the same time with a grunt, before feeling a pang of guilt when the body next to him stirred.

David turned around, cracking one eye half open as he squinted up at Matteo in the dimly lit room. Matteo had momentarily forgotten how much of a light sleeper David was. He’d spent plenty of nights with a numb arm after David had fallen asleep half on top of him and Matteo hadn’t dared to reclaim it, knowing it would disturb David’s peace.

“Everything ok?” David mumbled, his voice thick with exhaustion.

“Yeah,” Matteo lied, before rolling his eyes at himself. He didn’t need to lie, not to David.

“I just can’t sleep,” he added, shuffling himself back down the bed and turning on his side to face David.

David frowned, rubbing at his eyes sleepily before reaching out and gently pushing Matteo’s hair out of his face. Matteo sighed and leant into the touch; David’s fingers were cool, and they were soothing against his burning skin.

They stayed quiet for a while, David moving his hand down and curling his fingers around the back of Matteo’s neck as Matteo reached out to rest his hand on David’s hip, smoothing his thumb across the exposed skin where his shirt had ridden up. Matteo just focused on David’s breathing, still slow and steady from the heaviness of sleep, and counted each breath as they lay together in the darkness. It quietened the static down in his head, made the crawling under his skin settle ever so slightly, and each exhale brought him back down to reality. 

“Do you want to play a game?” David asked, breaking the silence and making Matteo jump and gasp.

David mumbled an apology to Matteo, moving his hand down to Matteo’s chest and fanning his fingers out so gently Matteo almost couldn’t feel it. Matteo’s heart was hammering, and when David noticed his face crumpled up with guilt.

Matteo sucked in a shaky breath and shrugged off the apology, shuffling himself a little closer. Everything just seemed a little bit too loud at the moment - the clock ticking on the wall was like the beat of a drum, and the buzzing of the street lights outside were setting his nerves on edge. He brought his focus back to David’s breathing, counting to twenty-nine before he replied to David’s question.

“What sort of game?” His voice sounded foreign, like it didn’t belong to him. It echoed and bounced off the walls, making his head throb even more. 

David hummed in thought, his eyes flitting around the room as he searched for an answer. Matteo only made it to breath fifteen before David spoke again. 

“I’ll say a word, and you have to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when I say it,” he said. 

Despite himself, Matteo smiled and nodded, and David grinned in return. 

“Colour,” was the first word, and Matteo tried to think of his favourite colour. It had been purple when he was a child, but his father had made fun of him for it, so he’d changed it to blue. Now he wasn’t so sure what it would be. His room was full of furniture that had been given to him, not that he’d chosen, and most of his clothes were grey or black.

“You’re not meant to think about it,” David said, breaking Matteo’s train of thought. “Don’t think, just say it.” 

Matteo looked back to David and realised he knew exactly what his answer was. 

“Brown,” he said with a self assuring nod. He he hadn’t had a favourite colour in years until he’d gotten the chance to count the different shades of brown in David’s eyes.

David frowned in confusion, but didn’t question it. Instead, he came up with the second word.

“Sky.”

“Rain,” Matteo replied, quicker this time and without much thought like David had instructed. He liked the rain, which was a good job since it rained so often. Most people dreamt of moving to somewhere warmer, but to Matteo that felt too much like the oppressing clamminess of a sleepless night. He preferred the gentle, muted colours of a rainy day.

“Soft,” came the next word, and that was an easy one.

“You,” Matteo said, reaching out and tangling his fingers into David’s hair. David croaked a tired laugh as he moved his hand to brush his knuckles across Matteo’s cheekbone, thumb trailing across the corner of his mouth. Matteo let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding on to, his chest slowly loosening along with the sound of David’s laugh.

“You’re ridiculous,” David muttered, and Matteo felt a toe prod at his shin.

Matteo watched David’s mouth curl up into a smile, his warm eyes watching Matteo with an expression that was nothing but fond. Matteo shut his eyes and felt David’s fingers skim carefully, gently, across Matteo’s skin. David was soft and quiet and always so tender; Matteo didn’t think his answer was ridiculous at all.

“You told me to say the first thing that comes to mind,” Matteo challenged, raising an eyebrow. 

David rolled his eyes, but kept his smile, and didn’t argue back any more. 

“Food,” was the fourth word. Matteo huffed out a laugh as he gave his answer. 

“Your sister.” Laura was the best cook Matteo knew, and his favourite day of the week was when he went to her and David’s flat for food. She’d always send him home with boxes full of leftovers to last him months, and eating them on lonelier days reminded him of David’s laughter ringing through the flat and Laura mirroring his grin. 

She’d tried to give Matteo cooking lessons before, which had ended up with sauce splattered across the kitchen wall and across David’s cheek. Matteo had laughed so hard it had hurt in the best kind of way. 

David didn’t laugh at Matteo’s answer this time. He smiled as if he was recalling the exact same memory as Matteo, and he nodded in agreement. 

“We never did get out that sauce stain you made,” David commented.

“We can call it an art piece,” said Matteo, making David snort. “I’ll sign it next time I come round.”

They went quiet again whilst David tried to think of a new word. He looked over Matteo’s shoulder to where the sun was just starting to rise, slowly spreading light through the room.

“Sun,” he said, scrunching up his face with a laugh as Matteo reached out and traced his finger down the bridge of David’s nose.

The sun was casting some of its light across David’s face now, just a slither of it spanning from his jawline to the corner of his lips. Matteo shuffled forward to press a kiss where the sun was touching - right on the hinge of David’s jaw - and smiled when he heard David sigh contentedly.

“You,” Matteo answered again, muttering it into David’s skin. David pushed him back to stare at him in confusion. 

“That doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” he protested, biting his lip to fight the smile on his face.

Matteo thought of David’s smile breaking into something warm and blinding when he caught Matteo’s eyes. He thought of David’s hands spreading warmth across Matteo’s skin, every inch David touched lighting up and burning under his fingers. He thought of days spent in bed where the sun always found its way through the crack in Matteo’s curtains just to spread itself across David’s body. It made perfect sense to him.

Matteo didn’t say that though; instead he just shrugged. David didn’t say anything either, simply leaning forward to kiss Matteo, sharing some of his sunlight to warm up Matteo’s frosty lungs. 

The light in the room was getting just a little bit too bright for Matteo’s sore eyes, so he moved himself forward again and buried his face into David’s chest with a grunt. David instinctively moved his arms to wrap them around Matteo, rubbing slow circles into the space between his shoulder blades, and Matteo sighed with relief. 

Matteo went back to counting David’s breaths, trying to keep his own in time with them whilst focusing on the thud of David’s heartbeat instead of the angry crackle of static still buzzing around his temples. 

“Do you want to get up? We could make breakfast,” David suggested, his voice rumbling through his chest. 

Matteo shook his head. His bones felt like they would crumble to dust if he tried to get up. He didn’t want to face the day, not yet.

David kissed the top of Matteo’s head, squeezing him a little before going back to rubbing patterns into his back. 

“That’s ok, we can stay here,” he said quietly, and Matteo mumbled a thanks into his shirt.

Before, insomnia was just part of Matteo’s life. He’d spend his nights up watching movies or playing games, anything to pass the time until he finally passed out from pure exhaustion. Now that those nights were more rare they somehow felt even more frustrating - he was trying so hard, doing everything right, but still sleep evaded him. 

It _hurt._ His eyes hurt and his skin hurt and his bones were grinding together painfully. He groaned and slung his arm over David’s middle, trying to pull him closer even though there was already no space left between them.

David threaded his fingers through Mateo’s hair, slowly combing out the knots. Matteo went back to focusing on his breathing.

“Is something bothering you?” David asked, pushing the hair from Matteo’s face again as Matteo leaned back to look at him.

David was watching him, eyes scanning Matteo’s face and looking for the answer. Sometimes Matteo was sure David could read his mind, because he knew what Matteo would say before he even spoke.

“No. Which is annoying,” muttered Matteo. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep because of what was weighing on his mind. Worry would eat away any thoughts of sleep and though it was still bad, it made sense. He liked it when he could categorise and colour code his feelings into reasons why he was having trouble sleeping, or concentrating, or why the world suddenly became too loud for him to cope. 

But sometimes a cold feeling settled in his stomach that something was _wrong_ despite the fact everything was ok. He could be happy, his mind quiet, and suddenly a switch was flicked that set Matteo’s nerves on edge and made everything feel off kilter. 

David hummed in understanding, and he nodded in agreement. 

“I hate that too,” he said softly. 

Yet again Matteo was finding himself endlessly grateful that David managed to understand him completely, even with just a few words. He made Matteo feel like he made sense, despite the fact he so often struggled to find the right words to explain things. 

David sat up a little, propping himself up against the wall and reaching over to the table for his sketchbook and pencil. Matteo responded by settling himself down with his head in David’s lap instead, smiling to himself when David bent down to kiss the top of his head again. 

“We can stay in bed today,” announced David, resting his sketchbook on Matteo’s shoulder and flicking through the pages to find a blank one. 

Matteo almost argued. They’d agreed to see the boys today, and he’d promised the flatshare he’d tidy up. The thought of getting up and facing the day was painful, but he had things to do, people that were relying on him.

But then he remembered before - a few weeks ago when David was having a bad day. Matteo had woken to find David curled in on himself, shrunken down with his eyes tight shut and his face contorted. He’d reached out and grabbed Matteo’s hand, bringing it to his chest and letting out a shaking breath that made Matteo’s heart hurt. 

“We could spend today in bed,” Matteo had suggested, and David had looked relieved but painfully guilty at the same time. 

“We can’t,” he’d mumbled. “I have too much to do.” 

Matteo had wanted to keep David there forever, to keep him in the safe and quiet of his room, but that wasn’t his choice to make.

Instead, he gave David’s hand a squeeze and told him, “All of that can wait if you need a break today.”

David had paused for a while, still holding tight onto Matteo’s hand, before nodding and pressing the lightest kiss to Matteo’s knuckles as a silent thank you. 

So this time David was giving Matteo a way out just like Matteo had done for him before, and so Matteo took it gratefully, nodding and shutting his eyes as he heard David’s pencil begin to scratch across the paper of the sketchbook.

The room fell quiet again, but this time it wasn’t uncomfortable. Matteo’s mind wasn’t swimming so much anymore, and the sounds that had filled his head before had dulled down to quiet background noise. Matteo could hear the scratching of David’s pencil - smooth and rhythmic - and hear the rasping of his breaths, almost in perfect time with the long pencil strokes.

Matteo didn’t know when exactly he’d fallen asleep, but knew he’d gotten to around breath one hundred and thirty three. When he woke back up, it was almost dark outside again and he could hear muffled voices in the kitchen, seeming far away from the quiet little corner of his room. Matteo sat himself up, rubbing his eyes and smiling when he looked to David, who had fallen asleep sat up with his head lolled forward. The sketchbook had dropped to the floor but he was still holding onto his pencil loosely.

Matteo woke David up by pressing a kiss to his temple, and though David groaned in protest he leant into the kiss anyway, and Matteo caught the start of David’s smile before he let his head drop onto Matteo’s shoulder. 

“Are you hungry?” asked Matteo, wrapping his arm around David’s shoulders. 

As if on cue David’s stomach growled loudly, making the two boys collapse into laughter.

“Starving,” David replied, but instead of getting up, he pulled Matteo closer and shuffled them both back down onto the bed. “But can we stay here for a little while longer?” 

Matteo nodded, and they seamlessly rearranged themselves so that David’s back was pressed up to Matteo’s chest, their legs overlapping. Matteo wrapped his arms around David, not caring about them going numb if they stayed in this position for too long, and he searched out David’s hand so that he could tangle their fingers together. 

He was still heavy with tiredness but the suffocating ache of a sleepless night seemed so far away now that Matteo had almost forgotten what it was like. He felt comfortable in his own skin again, and he sighed with relief at the thought. He knew that his problems weren’t solved, and his future would include plenty more sleepless nights. There’d be more times, too, when the world was just too loud and busy for him to cope, but for now he could take it one day at a time. Matteo buried his face into the back of David’s neck, pressing a soft kiss there, and David squeezed his hand in return. 

A song was playing in the kitchen, and David started to talk about a film that song was from. Matteo shut his eyes and felt the vibrations through his body as David spoke, hearing the smile in his voice and the way he talked a little bit faster when it was something he was particularly interested in. Matteo was sure he could listen to David talk forever and never get bored. 

It was a day they both needed, where everything else could wait and no one would resent them for letting a day pass without being useful. Sometimes Matteo just needed to exist, to let everything slowly put itself back into place, and wait for the world to make sense again. Having David there helped, even if it was just as a distraction. His warm smile and soft eyes always made Matteo feel a little more grounded, and helped bring him back home when he was lost in the dark. He let David’s voice wash over him, the music in the kitchen slowly filling the house and making a smile spread across his face. It was so much easier in times like this to remember that bad nights never lasted forever, and there was always a way to make it through. Even if that way was just a silly game to pass the time until things became a little more bearable.

Matteo propped himself up onto his elbow to place a smacking kiss on David’s cheek, and David’s sentence immediately dissolved into laughter. He turned around to face Matteo, so close that their foreheads were touching, and grinned at him.

“What was that for?” he asked, his breath warm on Matteo’s cheek. 

 _For being you,_ Matteo almost said, but decided against it. Instead he just shrugged, hoping David would understand like he always did. David was still grinning as he closed the space between his and Matteo’s lips to kiss him properly. 

Matteo couldn’t stop himself from drifting in and out of sleep as they lay there. He was still filled with comfortable exhaustion, his body heavy but in a good way, and it was hard to keep his eyes open. All he could feel was David gently tracing out patterns across his forearm and hand, and all he could hear was David humming quietly along with whatever new song came from the kitchen. He wished he could bottle moments up like this for whenever insomnia got the better of him; keep the feeling pure calm that completely enveloped him. It felt so fragile, though, like any movement would burst the bubble and bring back noise and chaos and the roaring headache that Matteo could still feel hovering near his temples. If the moment ended, the peace would be lost and Matteo knew he wouldn’t be able to keep hold of this tranquility. He knew it’d be replaced with the static in his head again and the cold that settled in his chest, keeping him awake and lonely. He couldn’t help thinking that he’d stay like this forever if he could. Nothing else mattered, everything could wait, the world could stop. 

But then David’s stomach rumbled again, and Matteo remembered that there was more to life than trying to avoid sleepless nights and being afraid of his own head.

“We need to get up,” he said, throat still clogged up with sleep.

David made a grumbling noise of protest, turning over onto his back and throwing his arm across his eyes.

“But I’m so comfortable,” he complained, keeping his arm over his face but using his free hand to seek out Matteo, bunching up his fist into Matteo’s shirt.

Matteo rolled his eyes, trying and failing to hide his smile. He began prodding at David’s ribs and stomach whilst David yelped and shouted in protest, batting Matteo away in between laughter.

David eventually agreed to getting up after Matteo promised they could go get their food and eat it in bed with a movie. It was a more than fair deal. 

They ended up having a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide which film they should watch, and David beat Matteo three times in a row. 

“I won,” he announced gleefully, positively beaming as he took Matteo’s laptop and settled down next to him, linking their ankles together. Matteo felt like it was more of a draw; he would have watched whatever David had chosen to put on anyway, as long as it meant they could spend more time together. 

The film started, and David settled his head onto Matteo’s shoulder and took his hand, rubbing his thumb across Matteo’s knuckles. Matteo squeezed David’s hand and smiled, and the world slowly started to turn again.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://call-this-a-mask.tumblr.com/), if you'd like!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading <3


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